You can find him here: @GazzaOfficial, blue tick and all. You can see who he follows (Piers Morgan and Robbie Savage? Really?). You can see how many followers he's picked up (a quarter of a million people in the 15 hours since he posted his first tweet, most of which was overnight).

More than anything, though, you'll be hanging on the former footballer's every word.

It was only a matter of weeks ago that we saw the Gazza documentary. It did not paint a picture of a man who is ready for the occasional insanity that being a celebrity Twitter can throw up. He is a man battling alcoholism, deeply paranoid about his interactions with the media and generally a well-intentioned bundle of addictive insecurities.

I hope that going on to Twitter works out for the 46-year-old. It has the potential to be a very good thing. Gazza has a chance to present himself as he wants to be seen, to cut through the tabloid stories and be himself.

Finally on Twitter will keep everyone up to date... Looking forward to getting to know you guys and showing you the real Gazza !!

He may find Twitter a source of great comfort. Saying there is a lot of warmth and affection out there for Paul Gascoigne is cliched but no less true for having said it.

What's come across most strikingly over the years of Gazza's troubles is that he has a need to be loved. The cocktail of social media, connecting with fans who love him, and his addictive personality might be just what he needs: a non-alcoholic one.

There's a "but" here, though—as bare and in-your-face obvious as those fake breasts on Gazza's chest when he came home from the 1990 World Cup.

Former managing director of England cricket Hugh Morris once said of professional sportsmen and Twitter: "It is like giving a machine gun to a monkey."

The comparison is colourful, but relevant.

You can be fairly sure that whatever else Gascoigne has been up to in the decade or so since his retirement from football, it was not brushing up on the finer nuances of what you can and cannot say on social media.

And yes, while he'll strip away one level of the tabloids being able to twist his words, he'll encounter another.

We live in a world where his former England teammate, Gary Lineker, has been thrust into the spotlight as Twitter's most vocal England critic on the basis of a handful of wry tweets. What will be the reaction if Gazza damns the England midfield's ball retention this week?

More concerningly, what if the man who once showed up at the stakeout of serial killer Raoul Moat hoping to calm him down with a fishing rod, chicken and a few beers—only to subsequently admit he'd never met Moat and had been confused while drinking—has an opinion on something else he'd be better off keeping to himself?

For every well-wisher, there'll be someone following Gazza and wondering whether they'll be tuning in to catch the meltdown as it happens. This has the potential to be car-crash Twitter, and there is a market for watching people self-destruct.